Dissertations / Theses on the topic '1930-2019 Criticism and interpretation'

Jennifer Johnston, a contemporary Irish novelist, has written nine novels thus far encompassing a wide thematic range. While her protagonists include both male and female, in the three novels, The Old Jest, The Christmas Tree, and The Invisible Worm we witness the emergence of a new kind of heroine: the female Bildungsroman protagonist. I begin my study with a discussion of the traditional Bildungsroman as a male project, which traces the growth and self-development of an adolescent as he approaches maturity. A reformulation is then established allowing for a female version of the genre while differentiating between stories of the failure of development, such as Jane Eyre, and Johnston's stories where development is realized. I propose to demonstrate how Johnston's works exemplify the Bildungsroman form and also explore questions relevant to female development such as the protagonist's relationship to work, to love, to family, to tradition, and to writing.

The works of Marcel Dube are a testimony of the French Canadian society's evolution, at a time when its cultural and social identity was being questioned. Beyond any doubt, his plays had a strong influence upon Quebecers during the fifties and sixties. Dube's dramatic works have instigated the interest of critics throughout Canada and also in the United States and Europe.
This thesis represents an analysis of five plays written by Marcel Dube giving clear indication of the universality of his works, particularly based on unpublished documents. These plays were written almost thirty years ago; nevertheless, they are still alive and applauded nowadays, which corroborates their universality. Also, on the unpublished recording tapes, actress Monique Miller, actor Jean Duceppe and author and critic Jean Ethier-Blais dwell precisely on the universality of Dube's works. Therefore I thought advisable to study this particular topic in the following plays: Zone, Florence, le temps des lilas, Bilan and Au retour des oies blanches.
On these unpublished recording tapes, Marcel Dube talks about himself and his life as a writer. We learn about his childhood, the beginning of his career, the people who surrounded and encouraged him, the social, cultural, and political environment that prevailed at the time he wrote his most famous plays. He also acknowledges his mistakes, his weaknesses, his ambitions and talks about the motives that prompted him to become a writer.
Furthermore, well known author and critic Jean Ethier-Blais expresses his ideas and feelings regarding the author and his works. Actors and personal friends Monique Miller and Jean Duceppe recollect the circumstances and the effect the dramatic art of Marcel Dube has had on French Canadian culture.

So far, Francoise Mallet-Joris has been categorized either as a Catholic novelist or as a moderate feminist. Accused of conservatism by some, perceived by others as immoral, she has been considerably underrated by a critical audience anxious to maintain traditional literary categories. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that faith and feminism, far from conflicting with each other, are linked in Mallet-Joris' work with the process of writing, thus forming a triple entity where the common denominator is the theme of maternity. This theme will be analysed in four of Mallet-Joris' novels, Les Mensonges, Les Signes et les Prodiges, Allegra, and La Tristesse du Cerf-volant, using a symbolic approach whose usefulness lies in the twofold definition of a symbol as, on the one hand, a materialisation of the inexpressible and on the other, a split unity. For the temporal modality and the concept of identity inherent in the maternal experience place it outside the narrative system, thus putting any author who wishes to tackle this area in the position of either inventing a new narrative form or attempting a compromise between already existing forms and the specific content of the maternal experience. It is this latter alternative that Francoise Mallet-Joris adopts. Although as far as form is concerned, Mallet-Joris can hardly be termed innovative, she demonstrates on an ideological plane an originality which is largely the product of using the symbol of the Virgin Mary as an intermediary between the maternal experience and the symbolic order.

This thesis constitutes an investigation into contemporary writing--both fictional and philosophical. More specifically, it is a comparative analysis of the work of British novelist Angela Carter, and French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in the light of the concept of synthetic authenticity. It is divided into three chapters, "Becomings", "Events", and "Machines", and each chapter presents the work of both Carter and Deleuze and Guattari, respectively, in light of one of these topics. Chapter Two, however, focuses closely on Angela Carter's first novel, Shadow Dance, as it relates to the concept 'event'. And Chapter Three focuses on Carter's novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, as it relates to and differs from the schizoanalytic notion of desiring machines.

This thesis focusses on the literary self-reflexivity of Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes's collection of poems addressed to his long-dead first wife, poet Sylvia Plath. By close attention to the language of select poems and a discussion of cross-referencing images and allusions across the volume, and intertextually, I argue that the collection is more self-consciously ordered and designed than the mainly biographical criticism the work has met with suggests. The thesis focusses on the poets' art rather than the biographical context of Birthday Letters, though it does not draw a neat distinction between their lives and their poetry - rather it demonstrates how Birthday Letters itself treats the relationship of art to life thematically. The introduction outlines the context of the volume's genesis and publication and the notions of poetry, myth and drama out of which Hughes works, and introduces the central metaphor of metamorphosis as figured in Ariel's song "Full Fathom Five" from The Tempest, as well as the importance of that play to Plath. Each of the chapters that follow focusses on a cluster of inter-related imagery through a discussion of four or five key poems. Chapter One examines Hughes's portrayal of himself as imprisoned by Plath's poetic portraits, and relates this to the recurring motifs of the snapshot and the Medusa myth. The poems discussed emphasize Hughes's consciousness of the metamorphic and "magical" relationship of art to life. The second chapter discusses Hughes's use of the myth of the labyrinth and the Minotaur, tracing it back to Plath's writings and reading, and pointing out its self-reflexivity: the labyrinth figures Hughes's own loss as well as the labyrinthine nature of writing. The third chapter considers the themes of possession and loss, and how they attach themselves to images of houses and jewels. Possession and loss tum, self-reflexively, upon issues of inheritance and remembrance, notably Hughes's inheritance of Plath's poetic legacy, and his remembrance of her and her poetry through his own poetry. The conclusion pursues connections between the observations made in the separate chapters, outlining the larger context out of which the poems emerge, and returning to the trope of metamorphosis as figured in "Full Fathom Five"

Much of W. H. Auden's most brilliantly evocative poetry was written during the 1930's. His skill in catching the tones, the topics of his time, and his ability to evoke its moods and its social turbulence are unequalled among those of his generation writing of political unrest, international crises and revolution. It is no surprise that the word "Audenesque" has become part of the language of literary criticism describing a particular poetic style. Yet it was his poetry of the '30's that Auden later in his life revised and/or repudiated, creating textual problems involving basic critical issues related to literary interpretation, readers'responses to much-revised poems, and to the way that textual scholars approach the determinate relations among poems as first printed and subsequent, altered versions that are also authoritative. Traditional textual criticism cannot address all of the problems caused by Auden's extensive overhauling, nor can it provide evidence that some of Auden's harshest critics--the British Scrutiny group headed by F. R. Leavis and American critics Joseph Warren Beach and Randall Jarrell--may have dismissed him as a major poet too soon. But a method of textual treatment called versioning--the presentation of the complete texts of two or more different stages of a literary work--may be the most useful and efficient method of textual treatment for authors like Auden, and for readers and critics who might wish to assess the significance of Auden's revised works by comparing them with original texts.
Department of English

In order to counter what I regard as premature and reductive formulations of a 'native' British postmodernism, I identify a specific tendency in contemporary writing which I name the domestic surreal, and which I trace through the poetry of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Roy Fisher, Christopher Middleton, John Ash, Peter Didsbury and Ian McMillan. Through close reading and a comparative approach, I uncover key preoccupations with idiosyncratic perception, shared experience, urban space and poetic play. I also describe a network of allegiances and influence among these writers which reveals the domestic surreal to be one of the contemporary manifestations of an imaginative tradition which stretches back through the Surrealist and Cubist movements to Baudelaire and Rimbaud. For the poets of the domestic surreal, engagement with an aesthetic tradition is inextricably linked with their response to contemporary conditions. Drawing on dialectical and poststructuralist perspectives, I propose that the domestic surreal attempts to resist the constraints of social and aesthetic consensus in Britain and America in the period following the Second World War.

The imagery in Jackson Pollock's three extant sketchbooks which date from c.1934-1939 is dependent on that of other artists, especially El Greco, Rubens and Tintoretto. By 1947 however, the painter achieved a mature synthesis, distinctly his, which influenced contemporary painting, and was seminal for the work of a number of artists of the succeeding era. This dissertation is an attempt to document the phases of Pollock's artistic style from the early 1930s through to the middle 1950s, and to investigate the forces which may have catalyzed his temperament and precipitated his late style. The early sketchbooks begun in c.1934 represent Pollock's engagement with the art of the Old Masters and the teaching techniques of Thomas Hart Benton that utilized works from the Renaissance. The third sketchbook from c.1937-1939 induced him to re-examine the work of the Old Masters in a dialectical approach which incorporated new masters with old, but remained preoccupied with the sacred imagery found in the first two books. It is a resolution of these seemingly opposing modes of representation which produced several influential paintings in the early 1940s, including Guardians of the Secret and Pasiphae. At the same time these works display structural emulations related to those of Old Master paintings that would become increasingly prominent in Pollock's art. The canvases of 1947-1950, produced in what is commonly termed the “Classic Poured Period,” appear to represent a quantum leap beyond the concerns of Old Master works and European precedents. By this point Pollock had developed a fluency and assurance in his use of color and line that seems to extend further than the studied paradigmatic repetitions of his early sketchbooks. However, despite the radically new technique his paintings still exhibit pictorial and formal infrastructures derived from Renaissance paintings which were absorbed into Pollock's new idiom with surprising ease. In 1951 Pollock enters what Francis V.O'Connor termed as ‘his fourth phase'. The Black paintings of 1951-1953 betray a further exploration and adaptation of Old Master ideas, both iconographic and aesthetic and were created in Triptychs and Diptychs, typical altarpiece formats. With these paintings Pollock's forms acquired a confident plasticity and invention derived from the sculptural practices of Michelangelo, and progressively fewer individual images are quoted verbatim. An understanding of Pollock's early preoccupation with old Master painting is essential to comprehend the formation of the aesthetics of much of his later art. Significantly the underlying infrastructure remains fixed to old Master precedents and it was precisely these models of Renaissance and Baroque art which became the medium through which his mature synthesis was achieved.

Gary Snyder has offered, in poems and essays, ways to acknowledge the interrelationships of humans with the more-than-human. He questions common notions of selfness as well as understandings of what it is to be human in relationship to other species and ecosystems, and he offers new paradigms for the relationship between cultures and the ecosystems in which these cultures reside. These new paradigms are rooted in a reevaluation of our attitudes toward our physical bodies which impacts our relationship to the earth and raises new possibilities for an ecological spirituality or philosophy. The sum of Snyder's endeavors is a foundation for an understanding of ecopoetics. Snyder's poem "The Trail is Not a Trail" is an interesting place to begin examining how human perceptions of the self are central to the kinds of relationships that humans believe are possible between our species and everything else. In this poem there is a curious fusion of the speaker and the trail. In fact, with each successive line they become increasingly difficult to separate. The physical self is central to Snyder's poetry because his is a poetry of the self physically rooted in ever-shifting relationship with the biosphere. The relationship of the self to the biosphere in Snyder's poetry also points toward a spiritual experience that can be called ecomysticism, by which I mean the space where new ecological paradigms and mystical understandings of the world overlap. Ecomysticism goes beyond mysticisms that describe a spiritual being longing for supernatural experience while being "unfortunately" trapped in a physical body. Ecomysticism emphasizes the spiritual and physical interrelatedness or interconnectedness of all matter, the human and the more-than-human. The integration of the spiritual and physical aspects of the self is only possible through an awareness of the interrelatedness of the self and the non-human. New paradigms for the self are thus central to ecopoetics, a poetics that seeks to heal the rift between humans and the biosphere.

In 1919 Lawrence left England to search for a better society; his novels and travel sketches (the latter are usually seen as peripheral to the novels) continually questioned the values of Western society. This study examines D.H. Lawrence's great 'English' novels in the light of their vivid portrayal of place and community. However, to procure a new emphasis the novels and travel writing are brought into close alignment, in order to examine the way in which the sorts of philosophical questions Lawrence was interested in - ideas on human character, marriage, social structures, God, time, and history - influence his portrayal of place and community across both these genres. Chapter I, on Sons and Lovers, emphasises the way social and historical factors can shape human relationships as powerfully as personal psychology. In Chapter II, on Twilight in Italy, discussion of the effect of place on human character is broadened into a consideration of the differences between the Italian and English psyche; the philosophical passages are read in the light of revisions made to the periodical version. Chapters III and IV, on The Rainbow and Women in Love, conscious of the critique of English society that Lawrence made in Twilight, recognise that although Lawrence is concerned to show the flow of individual being he is no less interested in the relationship between the self and society, and the clash between psychological needs and social structures like work, marriage and industrialisation. Chapter V, on Sea and Sardinia, examines Lawrence's realisation that the state of travel engages with the present and impacts on individual needs and identity. Chapter VI, on Mornings in Mexico, studies the way Lawrence transcended the journalism usual to the travel genre and maintained a deep spirituality as he pondered the attributes of a primitive society and its appropriateness to Western Society. Because travel writing is both reactive and subjective (a writer's reaction to a country is underpinned by the metatext of his own concerns), I ask if Lawrence's presentation of experience can be thought of as accurate or whether places and people are constructs of his imagination. Chapter VIII examines Lady Chatterley's Lover as Lawrence's attempt to bring together the attitudes to sex, class and education witnessed on his travels with an English setting; to envisage a way of living that would meet the deep-rooted needs of man. Chapter VIII, on Etruscan Places, shows Lawrence conscious of encountering the ultimate journey, death, and pays tribute to the fact that while the book searches for philosophical answers on how to die, it is at the same time a paean to life and the beauty of landscape.

Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation examines the idea of apocalypse through the lens of science fiction (sf) written during the current fin de siècle period. I have dated this epoch, known as the information era, as starting in 1980 with the advent of personal computing and ending in approximately 2020 when the functional limits of silicon-based digital manufacturing and production are expected to be reached. By surveying the field of contemporary sf, I identify certain trends and subgenres that relate to particular aspects of apocalyptic thought, namely, conceptions of the ‘terror of history,’ the sublimity of accelerated techno-scientific advance, the ‘affective turn’ in media-culture and posthuman philosophy. My principal method of inquiry into how the apocalypse is imagined or ‘figured’ in sf is the concept of hyperstition – a neologism (combining the words ‘hyper’ and ‘superstition’) coined by the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). Hyperstition describes an aesthetic response whereby cultural fictions – principally, ideas relating to apocalypse – are imagined as transmuting into material realities. I begin by scrutinizing two posthumanist works of theory-fiction (theory written in the mode of sf) by the CCRU and 0rphan Drift which anticipate immanent human extinction and imagine the inception of a new evolutionary cycle of machine-augmented evolution This sensibility is premised on the sociallydestabilising cycles of exponential growth that characterise information-era technological developments, particularly in the digital industries, as well as the accelerated human impact on the natural environment. Central to my argument is the romantic materialist philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and their concepts of accelerationism, schizoanalysis and Bodies without Organs (BwO’s). Their ontology is constructed around the idea that exponential rates of development necessitate a new aesthetic paradigm that ventures beyond philosophies of human access. The narrative of apocalypse, approached from this perspective, can be interpreted in catastrophic or anastrophic terms; either as a permanent ending or as the beginning of something radically new. Using hyperstition, I also investigate the sf of Russell Hoban, Michael Swanwick, Brian Stableford, Charles Stross, Dan Simmons, M. John Harrison and Paul McAuley to see not only how these authors interpret the concept of cultural acceleration, but also to identify common threads. Countering the catastrophic ‘death of affect’ postulated by theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio with the anastrophic rejoinder of cyberdelic information-era countercultures, I conclude by investigating the new ‘affective turn’ in contemporary media theory. The works of theoretical fiction and sf that I investigate are informed, as I demonstrate, by the Situationist techniques of psychogeography, dérive and detournement, as well as by the literary tropes of 18th and 19th century fin de siècle Gothic and dark Romantic fiction.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie proefskrif ondersoek die idee van apokalips deur die oogpunt van wetenskap fiksie (wf) soos geskryf gedurende die huidige ‘fin de siècle’ tydperk. Ek dateer hierdie epog, bekend as die inligtings-era, as die tydperk wat in 1980 begin met die koms van persoonlike rekenaars en nagenoeg eindig in 2020, wanneer die funksionele limiete van silikon gebaseerde digitale vervaardiging en produksie na verwagting bereik sal word. Deur die veld van kontemporêre wf in oënskou te neem, identifiseer ek sekere neigings en sub-genres wat vergelyk met sekere kenmerke van apokaliptiese denke, naamlik: begrippe soos die ‘verskrikking van geskiedenis’, die verhewendheid van versnelde tegno-wetenskaplike vooruitgang, die ‘emosionele omkeer’ in media-kultuur en post-humanistiese filosofie. My primêre metode van ondersoek van hoe die apokalips voorgestel of ‘beskryf’ kan word in wf, is die begrip van hiper-bygelowigheid - ‘n neologisme (samevoeging van die woorde ‘hiper’ en ‘bygeloof’) soos geskep deur die Kubernetiese Kultuur Navorsings-Eenheid (KKNE) en Nick Land, medestigter van die KKNE. Hiper-bygelowigheid beskryf die proses waarvolgens kulturele versinsels - hoofsaaklik opvattings met betrekking tot apokalips – in materiële realiteite omgeskakel kan word. Ek ondersoek ek twee post-humanistiese werke van teorie-fiksie (teorie geskryf volgens die wf metode) deur KKNE en 0rphan Drift, wat inherente menslike uitwissing verwag en die ontstaan van ‘n nuwe evolusionêre siklus van masjien-toename voorstel. Hierdie proses is gebaseer op die sosiaal-destabiliserende siklus van eksponensiële groei wat kenmerkend is van die inligtings-era se tegnologiese ontwikkelinge, veral in die digitale industrie, sowel as versnelde menslike impak op die natuurlike omgewing. Die kern van my beredenering is die goties-materialisties-teoriese standpunt soos deur Land ingeneem, sowel as die romanties-materialistiese filosofie van Deleuze en Guattari. Hierdie gevalle van neo-materialistiese (of objek-georiënteerde) filosofië word toegelig deur ‘n apokalipties-teoretiese basis bekend as akseleerasionisme. Hierdie uitgangspunt is ontwikkel rondom die idee dat die eksponensiële tempo van ontwikkeling ‘n klimaks sal bereik in ‘n evolusionêre ‘wipplank punt’ en dat ‘n nuwe estetiese paradigma nodig is wat dit bokant die filosofie van menslike vermoë kan waag sodat daar oor hierdie waarskynlikheid geteoretiseer kan word. Die beskrywing van apokalips, soos vanuit hierdie oogpunt beskou, kan vertolk word in beide katastrofiese of anastrofiese terme of as ‘n permanente einde of as die begin van iets wat radikaal nuut sal wees. Deur gebruik te maak van die hiperbygelowigheidsteorie, wat ‘n onderafdeling is van akseleerasionisme, ondersoek ek WF van Russell Hoban, Michael Swanwick, Brian Stableford, Charles Stross, Dan Simmons, M. John Harrison and Paul McAuley ten einde vas te stel hoe hierdie skrywers die konsep van kulturele akseleerasie interpreteer, maar ook om gemeenskaplike leidrade te identifiseer. Met teenargumentering ten opsigte van die katastrofiese ‘dood van affek’ gepostuleer deur teoretici soos Jean Baudrillard en Paul Virillio met die anastrofiese samevoeging van kuberdeliese inligtings-era-kontra-kulture, ondersoek ek die nuwe ‘gemoedsomkeer’ in kontemporêre mediateorie. Die werke van teoretiese fiksie, sowel as baie van die ander gevalle van wf wat ek ondersoek en soos deur my gedemonstreer, word toegelig deur Situasienistiese tegnieke van psigo-geografie, dérive en detournement, sowel as deur die literêre menigtes van die 19de eeu ‘fin de siècle’ donker Romantiese en Gotiese fiksie.

How is Bakhtin's conception of novelistic openness distinct from modernist-dialectical irresolution or open-endedness? Is Women in Love a Bakhtinian "open totality"? How is dialogic openness (as opposed to modernist indeterminacy) a "form-shaping ideology" of comic interrogation?
This study tests whether dialogism illuminates the shape of openness in Lawrence. As philosophers of potentiality, both Bakhtin and Lawrence explore the dialogic "between" as a state of being and a condition of meaningful fiction. Dialogism informs Women in Love. It achieves a polyphonic openness which Lawrence in his later fictions cannot sustain. Subsequently, univocal, simplifying organizations supervene. Dialogic process collapses into a stenographic report upon a completed dialogue, over which the travel writer, the poet or the messianic martyr preside.
Nevertheless, the old openness can be discerned in the ambivalent laughter of The Captain's Doll, St. Mawr or "The Man Who Loved Islands." In these retrospective variations on earlier themes, laughing openness of vision takes new, "unfinalizable" shapes.

Orientador: Suzi Frankl Sperber
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: Hilda Hilst (1930-2004) publicou diversos livros de poesia nos anos de 1950 e 1960 e ainda escreveu algumas obras teatrais entre 1967 e 1970. O surgimento em 1970 da sua primeira obra em prosa é um momento importante de construção do seu projeto literário onde os limites entre vida e obra começam a ser cada vez mais estreitados. A pesquisa desta dissertação quer contribuir para a compreensão deste contexto a partir de uma leitura do conto Kadosh, publicado no ano de 1973, na obra de mesmo nome, tendo como foco a questão do sagrado. A metodologia utilizada partiu da leitura desta obra e do conjunto da produção de Hilda Hilst, para em seguida investigar no arquivo, em fotos, cartas, anotações e originais, os rastros da emergência desta problemática na obra da autora. O destaque particular foi dado para o período entre o final dos anos de 1960 e começo dos anos de 1970, relacionados ao contexto específico de produção de Kadosh. O resultado da pesquisa são os quatro ensaios, independentes, mas interconectados que se apresenta neste trabalho: o primeiro abordando como a questão do sagrado emerge enquanto um problema literário para Hilda Hilst, através da análise de algumas correspondências que tratam do ofício da literatura, apontando indiretamente como se configura para a autora uma imagem privada de si, nos anos de 1950 e 1960; o segundo enasio parte de excertos de textos e de originais para mostrar como se configura a problemática do sagrado na sua obra literária até a publicação da coletânea de Kadosh, apontando ao final, através da análise de alguns excertos críticos, como se forma uma imagem pública da autora, à época da publicação do conto, nos anos de 1973-74; o terceiro parte do campo de significações relacionados à religiosidade que estão presentes nos rastros do arquivo, para produzir uma interpretação de Kadosh, do ponto de vista do seu universo referencial e o último ensaio tece considerações sobre a forma como se caracteriza a escritura da autora no texto e que gera contradições com relação ao conjunto de representações religiosas do conto, constituindo-se deste modo a sua aproximação particular ao sagrado. Como subproduto da pesquisa produziu-se ao final uma edição comentada de Kadosh que aponta parte das referências feitas na obra. A conclusão desta pesquisa indica como, no trabalho com o arquivo, a relação vida e obra se constitui como um amálgama indissociável que determina o percurso da interpretação, sendo um lugar de contradição e um desafio para a crítica.
Abstract: Hilda Hilst (1930-2004) published some books of poetry in the 1950's and 1960's and wrote some drama from 1967 to 1970. The appearance of her first book in prose, in 1970, is an important moment in the building of her literary project, when the limits between her personal life and her literary work get closer. The research os this dissertation intends to contribute to the understanding of this context, with an interpretation of the short story Kadosh, published in 1973, in the book with the same name, with a focus in the question of sacrality. The methodology began with the reading of this story and all the published books of Hilda Hilst, after this it was done a research in the archives, working with photos, letters, booknotes and the originals, looking for the signs of the appearance of this question in the work of the writer. The main attention was directed to the period between the end of the 1960's and the begining of the 1970's, more related to the context of Kadosh. The results of all this research are the four related essays, which are presented here: the first one analyses the appearance of the sacrality as a literary question for Hilda Hilst, working with some letters, which have as theme the problem of the writer's work, showing up Hilst's image of her own, in the 1950's and 1960's; the second essay choose some excerpts of Hilst's published books, of her originals and of some articles published in the print about Kadosh, showing up Hilst's public image, in 1973-74; the third one began with an analysis of the religious references, which can be seen in the signs of the archive to produce an interpretation of Kadosh; by the end, the last one is an analisys of the writing of the author in the short story, which produces a contradiction with the religious representations of Kadosh and constitutes the special approach of Hilst to sacrality. As another result of this research, it was organized a commented edition of the short story Kadosh, which indicates part of the references alluded by the text. The conclusion of this work show up how in the work with the archives, the relation between life and literary work as one whole directs the way of interpretation and build a place of contradictions, which plays a role in making the criticism a challenge.
Mestrado
Literatura Brasileira
Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

Cette thèse propose une lecture croisée des épopées traditionnelles et postcoloniales dans un cadre transculturel. Une analyse comparée de Moby Dick de Herman Melville, Omeros de Derek Walcott et la trilogie de l’Ibis d’Amitav Ghosh nous permet de cerner spécificités de l’épopée moderne postcoloniale. Celle-ci s’inscrit dans la lignée des épopées traditionnelles d’Homère, Virgile, Arioste, Camões et Milton, tout en rivalisant avec elles. Les épopées traditionnelles et modernes ont recours à des conventions qui esthétisent l’expérience collective comme les comparaisons épiques, la généalogie présentée sous forme de prophétie et la mise en abyme ekphrastique. L’épopée traditionnelle met en avant la vision d’une société unifiée grâce à des conjonctions harmonieuses entre le trope et la diégèse, des continuités généalogiques entre l’ancêtre et le descendant ainsi que des associations autoréflexives ekphrastiques entre l’histoire impériale et le texte qui la glorifie. Dans cette perspective, la spécificité de l’épopée postcoloniale semble résider dans l’articulation ambivalente de la condition postcoloniale. Ainsi, chez Melville, Walcott et Ghosh, le style héroï-comique contrebalance les comparaisons épiques opérant des transfigurations héroïques. De même, de nouvelles affiliations hybrides forgées par les personnages coexistent avec des généalogies discontinues, sans en combler toutes les lacunes créées par le déracinement et la violence coloniale. Cette vision équivoque trouve son expression la plus franche dans les séquences ekphrastiques où les textes sont confrontés au choix impossible entre commémoration de l’expérience et regard critique vis-à-vis d’elle
This thesis offers collocational readings of traditional and postcolonial epics in transcultural frameworks. It investigates the specificities of modern postcolonial epic through a comparative analysis of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. It explores how these works emulate, but also rival, the traditional epics of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Camões, and Milton. Both traditional and postcolonial epic rely on generic conventions in order to aestheticize collective experience, setting it against the natural world (via epic similes), against history and imperial destiny (via genealogy and prophecy), and against the epic work itself (via ekphrasis). However, traditional epic emphasizes a unified worldview, characterized by harmonious conjunctions between trope and diegesis, genealogical continuities between ancestor and descendant, and self-reflexive ekphrastic associations between imperial history and the epic text commissioned to glorify it. From this perspective, the specificity of postcolonial epic can be formulated in terms of its ambivalent articulation of the postcolonial condition. In the works of Melville, Walcott, and Ghosh, tropes of heroic transfiguration are held in check by the mock-heroic, while empowering self-adopted hybrid affiliations co-exist, but cannot entirely compensate for, discontinuous genealogies marked by displacement, deracination, and colonial violence. This ambivalence finds its most powerful expression in the ekphrastic sequences where the postcolonial texts are most directly confronted with the impossible choice between commemorating experience and being critical of such commemoration

This thesis analyzes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's contribution to the revival of chivalric ideals in late Victorian England. The primary sources of this study are Doyle's historical novels and the secondary sources address the different aspects of the revival of the chivalric ideals. The first two chapters introduce Doyle's historical novels, and the final four chapters define the revival, the class and gender issues surrounding the revival, and the illustration of these in Doyle's novels. The conclusion of the thesis asserts that Doyle supported the revival of chivalric ideals, and the revival attempted to maintain, in the late nineteenth century, the traditional class and gender structure of the Middle Ages.

Nineteenth-century women were a mainstay in the New England literary tradition, both as readers and authors. Indeed, women were a large part of a growing reading public, a public that distanced itself from Puritanism and developed an appetite for novels and magazine short stories. It was a culture that survived in spite of patriarchal domination of the female in social and literary status. This dissertation is a study of selected works from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman that show their fiction as a protest against a patriarchal society. The premise of this study is based on analyzing these works from a protest (not necessarily a feminist) view, which leads to these conclusions: rejection of the male suitor and of marriage was a protest against patriarchal institutions that purposely restricted females from realizing their potential. Furthermore, it is often the case that industrialism and abuses of male authority in selected works by Jewett and Freeman are symbols of male-driven forces that oppose the autonomy of the female. Thus my argument is that protest fiction of the nineteenth century quietly promulgates an agenda of independence for the female. It is an agenda that encourages the woman to operate beyond standard stereotypes furthered by patriarchal attitudes. I assert that Jewett and Freeman are, in fact, inheritors of Hawthorne's literary tradition, which spawned the first fully-developed, independent American heroine: Hester Prynne.

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Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
English Literature

While literary critics heretofore have subordinated Conan Doyle to more "canonical" writers, the author argues that his writings enrich our understanding of the ways in which Victorians and Edwardians constructed their identity as imperialists and that we therefore cannot afford to overlook Conan Doyle's work.

Summary This thesis uses poststructural theory to question how language shapes educational policy and practice. It starts from the premise that the tendency for categorising knowledge as binary opposites, whilst potentially useful, also encourages polarisation, is reductive, and produces closure. Thus, by interrogating the ‘/’ [slash], the boundary between the pairs, the intention is to produce a different, more equable, productive, and openly uncertain way of questioning unresolved educational dilemmas, hence the search for a question. Educational inclusion/exclusion foregrounds this research. It did not start out this way. As a scientist, a zoologist by training, and steeped in the rigidity of scientific method, the original study concerned proving a hypothesis, using questionnaires to collect the data and followed by some sort of statistical analysis. However, this approach did not acknowledge the complexity, nuances and shades of meaning within the language of inclusive education that I wished to explore. Poststructural theory offered a different strategy and interrupted my positivist thinking throughout. Thus, a Foucauldian approach has been used to interrogate the inclusion/exclusion binary in the literature. Searching for the historical a priori is followed by an interrogation of the different discourses and the power relations therein. An empirical analysis succeeds the textual analysis, for which data was collected in the form of interviews. Called participatory interactions, secondary teacher educator colleagues were asked to talk about inclusion, and activatory phrases were used to stimulate discussion. Poststructural interruptions about ethics suggested an innovative method of discourse analysis developed using Derrida’s metaphor of a postcard, in which he enacts the performative stance of deconstruction. Aspects of the data that troubled the inclusion/exclusion binary are presented as verse alongside a reflexive response that stimulates theoretical discussions called ‘new lines of flight’. On the reverse side of every postcard is a photograph, a graphic representation of some feature pertaining to the data selected, and the stamp is a picture of the philosopher whose work inspired the theorisation. Interrogating the ‘/’ [slash] reveals the complex interplay of each side of the binary and surfaces a system of ethics regarding legitimation. The final chapter, therefore, proposes a deliberate ethical interruption – an interruption of practice in order to interrupt practice. Professional practice should be deliberately interrupted by research in order to interrupt oppositional binary thinking. This research should have a deliberately ethical component foregrounding personal values and attitudes. As a consequence, inclusive education could be reconceptualised. The current discourse of a failing educational experiment might then be transformed into an ethical project worth going on with.

While the connection between major choice and career goals seems logically obvious, research exploring this process is limited, particularly concerning how socio-economic class, based on parents' educational levels, influences the choice process. An important initial step in understanding this larger process is to explore how SES-based differences affect the process of choosing a major, a career goal and the way in which students link their major to a possible career. This study utilizes a comparative interview design to explore the lived experiences regarding major and career aspirations of first generation and traditional college seniors who have transferred from a community college to Portland State University. This study considers a first generation student to be any student that does not have a parent that has graduated from a four-year university in the United States. A traditional student is any student that has one or more parents who have earned at least a four-year degree in the U.S. Using a conceptual framework based on Pierre Bourdieu's work on social reproduction, this qualitative interview study examines how social and cultural capital as well as habitus influences first generation and traditional community college transfer students' choice of career, major and the link these students make between the two. This research found that the majority of students, both first generation and traditional community college transfer students, gained domain specific information that helped them with their major and or career goals from mentors such as, professors and academic advisers. However, Traditional students received "life advice" and encouragement from family members and employers that helped them to stay on track and gain inside information regarding their career choices. Traditional students used their past and current work history to assist them in strengthening their chances at realizing their career goals. Many traditional students planned to use the degrees they earned at college to advance within fields they already were working in. In comparison, it was only after they started college and settled on specific majors that first generation students looked for work experiences to help explore possible occupational outcomes. Another major difference between the two groups of students was that traditional students linked their majors to multiple jobs in an occupational area while first generation students linked their major to specific occupational positions. While there has been a large amount of research in the United States using Bourdieu's theory to examine how micro processes of language and teacher's expectations are utilized to maintain social stratification in K-12 education, there has been little research done on the micro processes that occur in college that lead to the reproduction of social class. This thesis illustrates how family background-based advantages that lead to differences in students' K-12 success actually continue after they enter higher education. By drawing attention to the importance of how family-background impacts major and career choices for community college transfer students after they arrive at the university, this thesis contributes to Bourdieu's explanation of how education at all levels contributes to the reproduction of a socially stratified society.

Ce travail propose une histoire de l’école de Genève à travers l’étude comparée des œuvres de Georges Poulet, Jean Starobinski et Jean-Pierre Richard. Une première partie retrace l’histoire intellectuelle du groupe à une époque marquée par l’influence de la phénoménologie, puis par la pensée structuraliste ; ainsi que par les tensions entre une nouvelle critique extrauniversitaire et une critique universitaire. En s’appuyant sur la correspondance inédite entre ces trois auteurs, ce récit historique permet de découvrir l’histoire du groupe de l’intérieur, et s’efforce de nouer la pensée à la vie. Une deuxième partie analyse les études de Poulet, Starobinski et Richard pour tenter de cerner la spécificité de leur démarche critique au-delà de leurs singularités de style et des différentes théories et méthodes auxquelles ces trois auteurs ont pu être associés. La notion de « geste critique » permet de proposer une analyse immanente de leurs textes, en se focalisant sur les mouvements de la pensée interprétative. Ces auteurs mobilisent images et métaphores pour penser l’acte et la relation critique, et cet imaginaire influe sur leurs gestes herméneutiques. Ceci rapproche leur pratique d’une pensée rêvante qui transforme l’interprétation des textes en un acte d’« imagination critique », compris comme la conjonction entre identification et prise de distance, discernement et force créatrice, logique et sensibilité
This dissertation proposes a history of the Geneva School through the comparative study of the works of Georges Poulet, Jean Starobinski and Jean-Pierre Richard. The first part traces the intellectual history of the group at a period in time marked by the influence of phenomenology and later, of structuralism; and by tensions between the new extra-academic criticism and traditional academic criticism. Based on the unpublished correspondence between these three authors, this historical account allows for the discovery of the group from within, and endeavors to link thought to life. The second part analyzes the works of Poulet, Starobinski and Richard in an attempt to grasp the specificity of the critical process, looking beyond their stylistic singularities and different theories and methods to which the three authors have been associated. The notion of “critical gesture” allows for an immanent analysis of their texts, focusing on the movements of interpretive thought. These authors employ images and metaphors to reflect on the critical act and on critical relations, and this imagination in turn influences their hermeneutic gestures. This brings their practice of dreamlike thought that transforms the interpretation of texts into an act of “critical imagination”, understood as the convergence between identification and distancing, discernment and creative force, logic and sensitivity

This study explores the depictions of technology and scientists in the literature of five writers during the 1960s. Scientists and technology associated with nuclear, computer, and space science are examined, focusing on their respective treatments by the following writers: John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Despite the close connections between the abovementioned sciences, space science is largely spared from negative critiques during the sixties. Through an analysis of Barth's Giles Goat-boy, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Asimov's short stories "Key Item," "The Last Question," "The Machine That Won the War," "My Son, the Physicist," and Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is argued that altruistic goals of space science during the 1960s protect it from the satirical treatments that surround the other sciences.

Recent conflicts in America concerning the environment (the harvesting of old growth timber in the Pacific Northwest, or the proposed opening of public lands in southern Utah to mining interests, for instance) have precipitated a personal examination of "historical others" (Jensen 64), individuals that possess very different sensibilities from a larger capitalist culture. Two such writers, Henry Thoreau and Gary Snyder, use the wilderness to enact alternative patterns of living that are designed to change cultures that have lost touch with the land, and have spiraled into a future where nature is a mere afterthought. In response to the growth of his society, Thoreau built a cabin at Walden pond as an experiment to determine if life could be lived simply and morally. His activities were an effort to "wake up" his "neighbors" who were just beginning to explore capitalism. "Moral reform," Thoreau believed, "is the effort to throw off sleep" (WAL 61). Thoreau's criticism of capitalism, agricultural reform, and slavery were generated to help his culture understand what it is to live morally, and "awake." Gary Snyder is the voice of Thoreau in the late 20th century, and his work addresses a world fully enveloped in capitalism. The exploitation of wild creatures and places by world governments and multi-national corporations is the problem of the modern age for Snyder, and place-based living is a way of dissenting from a consumption-oriented culture. Reform begins with the individual living close to the land, but also involves people living in communities and creating patterns of living that are ecologically stable. This paper is, in an immediate sense, a comparison of two "American" non-conformists, but it is also a response to cultural and environmental crises that both writers faced. Chapter I of this study introduces Thoreau and Snyder and establishes the parameters of this paper. Chapter II discusses Thoreau's views on capitalism, agricultural reform, and environmental degradation. Chapter III highlights Snyder's interest in place-based living and bioregionalism. Chapter VI brings Thoreau and Snyder together in a discussion of political and social reform. The final chapter of this study reflects how Thoreau and Snyder mesh as ecological philosophers.
Graduation date: 1997

The study concentrate on a critical analysis of Elliot Zondi's historical dramas, Insumansumane and Ukufa KukaShaka. The study constitutes an attempt to apply the theoretical approaches. The plays have been chosen only for reasons of my personal acquaintance. The whole study is divided into six chapters. Chapter one focuses on the general introduction. The general introduction will cover the aim of the study, research methodology, historical background of the plays, definition of terms and the biographical notes of the author. At the end of this chapter there will be a conclusion. Chapter two, deals with theme. The theme covers the following sub topics: title in relation to theme, the comparison between the theme and plot, theme and style, theme and dialogue, theme and characters, types of themes such as: theme of loyalty, theme of poverty, love, political violence and the moral lesson found in Elliot Zondi's historical drama books. Chapter three concerns itself with style and dialogue. Style and dialogue will look at the sentence construction, language, figures of speech, title and symbolism. Chapter four concentrates on plot and characters, which covers exposition, motoric moment, conflict, complication, tension, climax, suspense in the title, beginning, the middle and the end of the play, characterization, naming of characters, types of characters, kinds of characters and the development of characters. Chapter five deals with setting, which covers time, place and social circumstances. There will be a short summary, which leads to the discussion of the following chapter. Chapter six focuses on the general conclusion.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

李凱琳.
"2013年9月".
"2013 nian 9 yue".
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-146).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Li Kailin.

This dissertation is intended as an investigation into the art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.The aim of thisinvestigation is to assess the possibility that the art produced by Johns and Rauschenberg during the 1950s and 1960s constitutes a transition from modernism to postmodernism in the visual arts in America. This dissertation is introduced by means of a broad outline of relevent developments within the visual arts during the1950s and 1960s in America. This outline also contains explanations of modernism and postmodernism and looks at how these terms are presented throughout this text. In the outline I describe how Johns and Rauschenberg can be identified with a shift that occurred in the visual arts in America during the mid 1950s away from two prominent modes of painting within modernism, namely' action' painting, as described by Harold Rosenberg (1982:28), and Clement Greenberg's 'American-type' painting (1973:208). Both Johns and Rauschenberg actively produced art during the 1970s and 1980s the period in which postmodernism is generally regarded to have been most prominent. However, in an attempt to assess the possibility that their art is transitional from modernism to postmodernism, this investigation focuses upon a selection of artworks produced during the 1950s and 1960s. I intend to discover whether or not these works signalled a departure from modernism and if they did, at what point this occurred and what the specific nature of this departure was. These works are examined from conceptual, formal, iconographical, stylistic and technical viewpoints. Throughout this dissertation I attempt to describe how Johns and Rauschenberg anticipated and embraced various postmodem tendencies that have subsequently emerged in the arts and other related disciplines. Parallels are drawn between the artworks of Johns and Rauschenberg and the disciplines of architecture and literary theory. These parallels are drawn with the intention of aligning Johns and Rauschenberg's attitude towards making art in the 1950s and 1960s with a relatively widespread mood in literary theory, philosophy and the social sciences concerning the inability of these disciplines to deliver totalising theories and doctrines, or enduring answers to fundamental dilemmas and puzzles posed by objects of inquiry, and a growing feeling, on the contrary, that chronic provisionality, plurality of perspectives and incommensurable appearances of the objects of inquiry in competing discourses make the search for ultimate answers or even answers that can command widespread consensus a futile exercise. (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 12).
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1998.

Amharic literature has always occupied an important place in the history of the literary traditions of Ethiopia. Although this literature is believed to be strongly related to the politics of the country, there has been no study that proves this claim across the different political periods in the country. It would be ambitious to deal with all the literary genres in this respect. Therefore, delimiting the investigation of the problem is considered to be useful to filling the knowledge gap. Accordingly, this comparative research which investigates a representation of Ethiopian politics in selected Amharic novels across three political periods: 1930 – 2010 was designed. The objective of the research is to investigate the representation of Ethiopian politics in selected Amharic novels. The basic research question focuses on how these representations can be explained. An eclectic theoretical approach (the New Historicism, Bourdieu’s System Theory and the Critical Discourse Analysis) is employed to understand the representations. The main method of data collection focuses on a close reading of non-literary and literary texts. A purposive sampling technique is used to select the sample novels as the technique allows to select those that yield the most relevant data using some criteria. Based on the criteria set, sixteen novels are selected. The manners in which the political events represented in the novels are examined using different parameters. The parameters also look into the methods used in representing the political events and the time in which the events were represented, i.e. whether they are represented contemporarily, post-contemporarily or before the actual happening of the event. Having read the novels critically, the political events that took place in the three respective states are identified, analyzed and interpreted. The analysis mainly shows that different novels represented the political events in different manners: lightly or deeply, overtly or covertly, positively or negatively, contemporaneously or post-contemporaneously. Regarding the ‘how’ of the representations, it is observed that the critical novels, for instance, Alïwälädïm and Adäfrïs are covert and use symbols, direct and indirect allusions and other figures of speeches, and other techniques including turn taking, and size of dialogues to achieve their goals. Some political events are found to be either under-represented or totally un-represented in the novels. In some cases, same political events are represented differently in different novels at different times. Some novels that criticized the political events of the governments contemporaneously have been removed from market, republished in the political period that followed and exploited by the emerging government for its political end. There are some patterns observed in the analyses and interpretations of the politics in the novels. One of the patterns is that sharp criticisms on the events of an earlier political period are usually reflected in novels published in a new period. The critique novels of the Haileselassie government, for instance, Maïbäl Yabïyot Wazema, were published during the Darg period, and those that were critical of the Darg government, for instance, Anguz, were published in the EPRDF period. Another pattern observed is that there is no novel that praises a past regime, even despite being critical of a contemporary government. No novel written during the Darg period admired the Haileselassie period; and no novel written during the EPRDF period appreciated the Darg period. There are cases in which novelists who were critical of the contemporary Haileselassie and Darg periods, for instance, Abe and Bealu, respectively, ended up in detention or just disappeared and their novels, Alïwälädïm and Oromay, respecitely were banned from being circulated. Unlike the two previous political periods, the critique novels of the EPRDF period, for instance Dertogada, Ramatohara, and Yäburqa Zïmïta, have been published, or even republished, several times. Novels written during the Haileselassie period, such as Alïwälädïm, which were critical of the respective contemporary period, made their criticism covertly, using probes and imaginary settings and characters, while the critique novels of the EPRDF period, criticize overtly, and boldly. Generally, it could be concluded that the novels had the power to reflect history, and show human and class relationships implicitly, through the interactions of characters, story developments, and plot constructions, and the impact that politics has on the literature, and the influence of literature on politics.
Classics and World Languages
D. Phil. (Theory of Literature)

Text in English
Although initially dismissed as superficial, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Patrick Marber’s Closer use the theme of marital betrayal as a trope to investigate metatheatrical and epistemological issues. This study aims to demonstrate how these three plays define and explore the concept of authenticity within the fictional as well as the actual world; how arbitrary the construction and mediation of the characters’ identities are, not only from their own perspective, but also from the audience’s; the significance of the audience’s role in these plays and how issues of authenticity, fictionality and dishonesty impact on a genre that depends on illusion. This study intends to provide a new interpretation of these three texts through an analysis drawn from postmodern and poststructuralist theories, concerning the concept of authenticity within art and language. This study finds that the fictional worlds in these plays are created through mediation, which includes everyday language as well as complex works of art. Authenticity is shown to be an elusive concept. Language is either unsuccessfully used to force authentic responses from characters, or as a shield. In Betrayal, language functions as a protective barrier, preventing the characters from knowing one another. The Real Thing suggests that although inauthenticity may be established, the inverse is not necessarily true. In Closer, the characters try in vain to access authenticity through different registers of language. Furthermore, neither the body nor the mind is shown to be the locus of authenticity in Closer. Within the postmodern context where originality is impossible, mimicry is not seen as something external and inauthentic, but as inextricably part of human existence. The audience is drawn into the fictional world of these plays as its members are able to identify with the disillusionment of the characters and their inability to form a definitive view of each other. Simultaneously, the audience is ousted from the fictional world by being reminded of the author’s presence through metatheatrical devices. These plays take advantage of the fictional status of theatre to explore issues of authenticity, positioning them in direct opposition to postdramatic and verbatim plays.
Afrikaans & Theory of Literature
D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

Text in English
Although initially dismissed as superficial, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Patrick Marber’s Closer use the theme of marital betrayal as a trope to investigate metatheatrical and epistemological issues. This study aims to demonstrate how these three plays define and explore the concept of authenticity within the fictional as well as the actual world; how arbitrary the construction and mediation of the characters’ identities are, not only from their own perspective, but also from the audience’s; the significance of the audience’s role in these plays and how issues of authenticity, fictionality and dishonesty impact on a genre that depends on illusion. This study intends to provide a new interpretation of these three texts through an analysis drawn from postmodern and poststructuralist theories, concerning the concept of authenticity within art and language. This study finds that the fictional worlds in these plays are created through mediation, which includes everyday language as well as complex works of art. Authenticity is shown to be an elusive concept. Language is either unsuccessfully used to force authentic responses from characters, or as a shield. In Betrayal, language functions as a protective barrier, preventing the characters from knowing one another. The Real Thing suggests that although inauthenticity may be established, the inverse is not necessarily true. In Closer, the characters try in vain to access authenticity through different registers of language. Furthermore, neither the body nor the mind is shown to be the locus of authenticity in Closer. Within the postmodern context where originality is impossible, mimicry is not seen as something external and inauthentic, but as inextricably part of human existence. The audience is drawn into the fictional world of these plays as its members are able to identify with the disillusionment of the characters and their inability to form a definitive view of each other. Simultaneously, the audience is ousted from the fictional world by being reminded of the author’s presence through metatheatrical devices. These plays take advantage of the fictional status of theatre to explore issues of authenticity, positioning them in direct opposition to postdramatic and verbatim plays.
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature
D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

This dissertation examines selected love lyrics composed during the 1930s by Cole Porter, whose witty and urbane music epitomized the Golden era of American light music. These lyrics present an interesting paradox – a man who longed for his music to be accepted by the American public, yet remained indifferent to the social mores of the time. Porter offered trenchant social commentary aimed at a society restricted by social taboos and cultural conventions. The argument develops systematically through a chronological and contextual study of the influences of people and events on a man and his music. The prosodic intonation and imagistic texture of the lyrics demonstrate an intimate correlation between personality and composition which, in turn, is supported by the biographical content.
English
M.A. (English)